Evaluation of the Performance of Stool Samples to Diagnose Pediatric Pulmonary Tuberculosis in Routine Care: A Cohort Study From Pakistan
Aurangzeb B, Ambreen A, Bano I, Sarwar H, Shaheen A, Rao Z, Usama M, Akhtar Z, et al. (10 authors)
Open forum infectious diseases · 2025-10
Abstract
Background The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends stool as an alternative respiratory sample (RS) for diagnosing pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) in children Methods Children Results Among 650 children, we obtained 587 RS, 258 stool and 195 both stool and RS. Of 650, 264 (41%) had MC and 136 (21%) had clinically confirmed PTB. Stool-Xpert-Ultra had sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of 47%, 88%, 77%, and 72%, 73%, 72% against MC-PTB in children Conclusions Stool-Xpert-Ultra demonstrated moderate sensitivity against MC-PTB in <10. It identified additional MC-PTB cases when RS was unavailable or/negative, making it a valuable noninvasive alternative, especially in children ≥10 and with SAM, where it missed fewer cases.